About Me

Dr. Clyde Winters, has taught in the Chicago Public Schools for 36 years. He has taught Education and Linguistic Courses at Saint Xavier University-Chicago. As a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools Dr. Winters wrote State Standards in the 1990's for the Chicago Public School system and Common Core State Standards for Social Studies. He also wrote the 6th Grade World History Lesson Plans used in the CPS in 2000.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Thoughts on the Aryan Invasion of India 2

The BRW tradition originated in Nubia and spread first to theIndus Valley and thence to India. The earliest occurrence of BRW inSouth Asia, occurs on the Kathiwad peninsula, parallel ware has beenfound at the lowest levels of Harappa and Lothal dating to 2400 B.C.(Rao 1972) Dr. Nayar (1977). has shown that the Harappan BRW hasaffinities to predynastic Egyptian and West Asian BRW dating to thesame period. Rao (1972) has established the unitary nature of the BRW industry from Nubia to India.

The Harappans were masters of hydraulic engineering.TheseDravidians were a riverine people that practiced irrigationagriculture. They had both the shaduf and windmills.The Indus region is an area of uncertain rains because it islocated on the fringes of the monsoon (Fairservis 1987, p.47).Settlers in the Indus Valley had to suffer frequent droughts andfloods. Severe droughts frequently occurred in the Indus Valley so thepeople dug wells to insure for themselves a safe supply of water. J.M.Kenoyer, in Ancient cities of the Indus Valley Civilization (OxfordUniversity Press ,1998) maintains that a combination of extensiveflooding and shifti ng rivers destroyed the agricultural foundations ofthe Indus Valley and led to many Dravidians migrating out of theHarappan cities.

To compensate for the adverse ecological conditions, the Harappans settled sites along the Indus river (Fairservis 1987, p.48).The Dravido-Harappans occupied over 1,000 sites in the riverineIndus Valley environments where they had soil and water reserves. The Harappan sites are spread from the Indus Valley to Ai Kharnoum in northeastern Afghanistan and southward into India. In Baluchistan and Afghanistan Dravidian languages are still spoken today. Other Harappan sites have been found scattered in the regions adjacent to the Arabian sea, the Derajat, Kashmir and the Doab.

The Harappans were organized into chiefdoms, averaging between two and five acres (Fairservis 1987). The Harappans weresedentary-pastoral people organized into various corporations such as sailor-fishermen, smiths, merchants and farmers. The Harappans also possessed the social technology of writing seals.

The Harappan sites are small and occupy only a few acres withlittle depth. This suggests that the Dravidian speaking colonistssettled the Indus Valley over a period of a few decades (Fairservis1987,p.46). Fairservis (1987,p.47) has shown that the site ofMohenjodaro was occupied for around 200 years.

The Indo-Aryan speaking people became strong in India after 1000 B.C. The Aryans made the Dravidians and other native Indian people into slaves like the Munda. They organized a caste system based on race.

The highest caste was based on the priesthood or Brahman, after him came the rajanya or warriors and aristocracy caste and then thecraftsmen or Varsya caste, and lastly the Sudra caste, called pariah.The Sudra represented the first Black population that lived in Indiabefore the coming of the Indo-Aryans.

In the early Indian writings the aristocracy an d warrior castewas referred too as rajanya. After the kshatriya conquered theIndo-Aryans, the warrior class was called Kshatriya. The Brahmanic civilization lasted from the 3rd to the 4th centuries B.C. During this period the Laws of Manu were written. The Laws of Manu became India's first civil and political code.

There were two Indo-Aryan migrations into India. The first wavesof Indo-Aryans arrived the Indo-Iranian borderlands when ecologicalconditions had improved. These Indo-Aryans began to settle areasformerly occupied by Dravidian-speaking Harappans.

As the Aryans moved southward other Dravidian-speaking groups living in isolated villages in the Punjab and Haryana, probably allowed

Indo-Aryan tribal groups to settle in their respected urban centers.This would explain the association of BRW with PGW in the Punjabdating between 1000-1300 B.C.( Singh 1982, p.xli). It would alsoexplain the mention of the highly developed civilization of thenon-Indo-Aryan speakers in the Rg Veda.

The second and major wave of Indo-Aryans probably entered northern India around 1000-800 B.C. This would explain why almost all the dependable PGW dates cluster around 800-350 B.C.(Agrawal & Kusumgar 1974, p.132).

By the advent of the second Indo-Aryan migration the Dravidianswere weakened by drought and famine and they were easily defeated and pushed out of the Gajarat. The PGW folk appears to have pushed the Dravidians into the Dekkan.

Due to the early Dravidian presence in Northern India there is aDravidian substratum in Indo-Aryan. There are Dravidian loan words in the Rg Veda, even though Aryan recorders of this work were situated in the Punjab, which was occupied around this time by the BRW using Dravidians.

Emeneau and Burrow (1962) have found 500 Dravidian loan words in Sanskrit. The Dravidian loans in Indo-Aryan are expected to reach 750. Indo-Aryan illustrates widespread structural borrowing fromDravidian in addition to the lexical loans. For example, Kuiper(1967) has noted the increasing frequency of Dravidian type retroflexconsonants in Indo-Aryan. Southward (1977) has also recorded theDravidian structural features borrowed by the Indo-Aryans.

A new hypothesis about Indo-Aryan has been advanced by Dr. K.Loganathan (Loga). Dr. Loganathan has presented convincing evidence that Sanskrit is really a form of Tamil, which is the base of this writing system. He has also shown a close relationship between Vedic and Sumerian, by way of Tamil.